1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the construction and use of distributed interactive voice and speech processing systems, including interactive voice response (IVR) systems and voice messaging (VM) systems. More particularly, the invention relates to form based publishing of voice information and the use of universally accessible personal profiles for authentication of the user by voice signatures and generating context sensitive active vocabularies to improve speaker dependent speech recognition. The invention also relates to the use of the user attributes and preferences stored in universally accessible personal profiles to improve the efficiency of navigation and search as well as efficacy of search results pertaining to user queries.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional interactive voice response (IVR) systems allow a user to place a telephone call into a system, navigate (generally using touch tone input) through a hierarchy of options in response to voice prompts and retrieve information stored in a computer database. Airlines, banks, credit companies and many other service organizations are just a few examples of the types of businesses using IVR systems to allow a customer (or prospective customer) to retrieve desired information. These conventional systems are generally organization-specific in that they offer access to a single database or set of databases related to the goods, services or other aspects of the organization maintaining the IVR system. Thus, conventional IVR technology is used to offer access to information specific to a single organization (i.e. a specific airline, bank or credit company). For example airlines typically use IVR to allow callers to access flight arrival and departure information or to select reservation options, for the particular airline only.
It is desirable to provide an IVR system that enables access to an aggregation of databases and services rather than a single database and service. One barrier to the provision of aggregated services in an IVR system is that conventional IVR systems do not have a distributed information publishing means. Conventional IVR systems do not have a mechanism for service/information providers to readily access the IVR system and add updated or entirely new information for publication on the IVR system.
Further, conventional IVR systems are generally configured for uniform access by any caller admitted to the IVR system. Each caller is handled by the system in the same manner and offered an identical set of options. One reason that IVR systems use uniform user interfaces for each caller rather than caller-specific configurations is that conventional IVR systems operate in "closed" computer environments hosting the particular IVR system. Thus, when a caller accesses a conventional IVR system, the only caller-specific information which the system has at its disposal, is any information previously provided by the caller which the system has maintained or any information that is provided by the caller during the IVR session (i.e. when a user enters an account number using touch tone telephone input). Because, however, collecting and storing caller-specific information with conventional technology is cumbersome and time consuming, most IVR systems do not offer caller-specific (caller customized) features.
There are numerous applications in which it is desirable for an IVR system to use caller-specific information in handling a call. Caller-specific information in the form of user preferences can aid in minimizing the size of a command tree which the user must navigate to access desired information. Additionally, caller specific information could also be used to authenticate the identity of a user in cases where security is an issue (i.e. in bank and credit contexts). Further, caller-specific speech training profiles could be used to implement speaker dependent speech recognition to allow for a caller to use voice commands in place of touch-tone commands. Still further, an IVR system having access to caller-specific data could be used to apply IVR technology in new application areas such as personal productivity.
Thus, there is a need for an improved voice and speech processing system that provides universal access to caller-specific information to provide user-customized IVR systems. Further, there is a need to provide universal access to voice and speech files in order to allow widespread use of such files for caller authentication and for performing speaker dependent speech recognition in IVR systems.